Texas rules up-the-skirt photos are legal in freedom of speech tussle that's not as clear cut as you think.

I've been saying for a geological era that women in the west have a burqa imposed on us. It's just that ours is invisible.

The Texas Court of Appeal ruling legalising up-the-skirt shots — where a perv can thrust his camera up your skirt to take the image for sexual gratification — seems on the surface like another mind-boggling manifestation of how patriarchy rools.

However, sensationalist reports have ignored the genuine concern that, in its current form, the improper photography statute has enough wiggle-room for abuse by the State. It is actually an interesting legal dilemma that requires closer examination than my own initial harrumphing shock-horror allowed. As ever, going back to the source rather than relying on press reports yields nuances that get missed.

The Independent reports:

The Texas Court of Appeals ruled 8-1 to strike down part of a law which bans taking images of another person in public without their consent and with the intention to “arouse or gratify the sexual desire of any person”, criticising the “paternalistic” intrusion into peoples’ private right to be aroused.

To stop someone using you as a masturbatory aid is not something the Founding Fathers had in mind when they penned their First Ammendment, says Sharon Keller (for the judge be a she, sistahs).

"Orwellian thoughtcrime", yelled lawyers for the perp Ronald Thomas, sounding like they never read any Gorgeous George in their lives. (Alexander Pope wasn't wrong when he wrote "a little learning is a dangerous thing".) After an alarming 2011 incident at Sea World in San Antonio, Thomas was found with 73 T & A shots of swimsuited children on his camera but, hey, this is his constitutional right.

In Wednesday's judgement the State argued, defending the improper photography statute in its present form:

The State further contends that the lack-of-consent requirement means that the statute does not apply to a photograph of a person in public as long as the photograph is of an area of that person that was exposed to the public. … any person who appears in public and exposes a certain part of the body to the public has necessarily consented to that part being photographed, and therefore, the improper-photography statute would not apply. But, the State reasons, if the person is not in public, or the photograph is of an area of the person that is not exposed to the public—such as the use of an X-Ray camera that can see through clothing or a photograph taken up a woman’s skirt—then the improper-photography statute would criminalize such behavior if done with the requisite intent [italics mine]. … the statute serves the important government interest of protecting privacy by “protecting individuals from invasive covert photography” and “protecting individuals from having their images unconsensually exploited for the sexual gratifications of others.”

But the defence argued:

... the improper-photography statute prohibits not merely the act of photography but photography with intent to arouse or gratify sexual desire, and the latter is expressive. ... While the legislature may have a legitimate interest in prohibiting “peeping tom” and “up-skirt” photography, appellant contends that the language of the statute “utterly fails to achieve that interest because it fails to distinguish those situations from merely photographing a girl in a skirt walking down the street.” Appellant argues that the “street photographer, the entertainment reporter, patrons of the arts, attendees to a parade or a pep-rally, [and] even the harmless eccentric are all at risk of incarceration under a plain reading of this statute." … The amicus also states that the statute “covers only those photographs that have the intended primary effect of causing sexual arousal, and it is the content of speech that would cause such arousal.”

It's a bad-faith argument, but the creep has a point in law. Your freedom not to be sexually harassed and violated is trumped by this man's right to expression because the lawyers who wrote the legislation failed to nail it. So now in this corner of the Land of the Free, women and children have choices: you can cover up or you can wear your skirt or swimwear and be considered fair game by male predators.

The judge concluded:

... that photographs and visual recordings are inherently expressive … The camera is essentially the photographer’s pen or paintbrush. Using a camera to create a photograph or video is like applying pen to paper to create a writing or applying brush to canvas to create a painting. … Banning otherwise protected expression on the basis that it produces sexual arousal or gratification is the regulation of protected thought, and such a regulation is outside the government’s power.

Yet this intimidation is permitted. Consent doesn't come into it as it would if you sat for a painting as "there need not be any actual concurrence of wills between the photographer and the subject or any actual voluntary agreement by the subject to be photographed." Is a direct image of you snapped by a photographic device as artistically valid as a scurrilous cartoon? One has been created in the mind and brought into the world through an act of artistic creation whilst the other is an immediate capture of your actual image in light form. Snapping police in their duty has political validity in a way that photographing your knickered bum clearly does not.

However, the judge says, "A person who walks down a public street cannot prevent others from looking at him or her with sexual thoughts in their heads." Perversely, even though the areas of your body are not on public display, photographing them covertly is legal. "Protecting someone who appears in public from being the object of sexual thoughts seems to be the sort of 'paternalistic interest in regulating the defendant’s mind' that the First Amendment was designed to guard against."

Yeah, so let's allow them to enact what's in their minds willy-nilly. The letter of the law is a dead thing if there is no application of the spirit of the law.

However ...

Could it be this which is the problem? The judge says:

The statutory provision at issue is extremely broad, applying to any non-consensual photograph, occurring anywhere, as long as the actor has an intent to arouse or gratify sexual desire.

Because the act of photographing is not illegal in itself, but is only illegal under the improper photography statute when motivated by sexual gratification, the law is being asked to look into a person's mind, and this, I reckon, is where the difficulty lies. Remember those italics in the State's argument defending the statute? "… if done with the requisite intent"? How on earth do you determine whether or not this is the case?

“Photographs are routinely taken of people in public places, including at public beaches, where bathing suits are also commonly worn, and at concerts, festivals, and sporting events. Taking photographs of people at such venues,” the Court said, “is not unusual, suspicious, or criminal.”

So this may be a case of dangerously worded legislation bashed out in a rush, with the devil being in the detail. Some societies consider a photograph to be theft of the soul. Until this flabby statute is tightened up, in this instance, I fear they may be right.

The appeal against the ruling hinges on whether the camera is a dead machine and photography a technical process not protected by constitutional right. Jury … still out.

Sisters: poem from the Fabulous Ninja Gurl about feminism and politics as sleight of hand

Put the blame on BAME, why don'tcha?

Yelling that you stand up against social injustice does not mean that you do. One of the things that has shocked me the most about my time in the left is how various characters can say and write one thing, and then do the exact opposite, like words don't have meaning.

It's a flimsy Potemkin village of left postures, a sleight-of-hand art mastered by a largely white Oxbridge elite who tell others to check their privilege while failing to do so themeselves; who loudly defend victims while slyly substituting themselves for such and booting out the incumbents; who insist they tell the truth while twisting the narrative out of shape.

Whiny and self-serving, brooking no challenge or debate, it is the art of perpetuating oppression while posing as liberator and utterly gobsmacking in its cheek.

I always thought the role of the revolutionary was to make visible the invisible. That goes for hidden power relations as well as flesh and blood human beings.

Face value and lip service are tools of the trade when you take the public for a ride. Perhaps the inability to discern between actions and words does indeed make you a sucker.

Cue drumroll: on a silver salver, may I present to you a blue pill and a red pill … Your choice.

Sisters (first draft)
by Anna Chen

The siren sisters call,
"Help her. Help her."
Help who?
"Help the woman of colour.
We'll tweet and link
if not our arms then our charms:
I am the good fairy, look at me."

But I am a woman of colour.
"We are all women of colour now."

No, I AM a woman of colour.
"Not sure your type qualifies.
That's almost white but not quite.
Help her. Help the woman of colour
except for the ... what is it you are again?"

But I AM a woman of colour.
"Then help yourself."

Okay.
I would like to thank all the white sisters
who say they could not give a shit
or who say they do, without whom ...

I am the fabulous Ninja Gurl who dances among you
blowing kisses and raspberries,
turning cartwheels and juggling flames.
"Is there a draught in here? Shut that door,"
say the dames atremble
that some ghostly elephant has thundered into the parlour
and pissed on their parade.
You are chilly and chilled in your icicle tower
and can freeze me out at a hundred paces.
Your thousand-yard stare is as close as you can bear
my ashy traces in the sand.

I am not insubstantial, a helpless damsel in distress
who you can pet like a mouse,
neither am I an industry powerhouse, of use.
In your dark lens I am let loose, the barbarian at the gate
who you secretly rate,
but who you fear would play buzkashi,
pounding your carcass into dirt under my horse-hooves.
I, subspecies, stinking of animal skins,
ripping carcasses with graveyard teeth, blood on my breath,
who's fought in battle for our cause,
dived off sheer cliffs and hobbled
on smashed spine back to health.
No wonder you won't let me in.
I am the wind under your roof,
the fierce blast shaking your ballast,
that rattles your windows.
And how are you enjoying the view?

Every Cinderella should have such sisters.

In the shadows, in the cracks beneath the crags,
While you file your copy, I file my teeth to jags.

Case study of experience in the British left.

Solidarity is for white women: what happens in the British left

I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of white women in the left who offered me warmth and support as a sister while I was an activist. So it is with pleasure that I see one black American feminist, Mikki Kendall, stirring it up with the brilliantly exasperated Twitter hashtag, #solidarityisforwhitewomen.

I recently attempted to draw attention to the actions of a prominent section of the British left who are moving rightwards and redrawing events in living memory as a white narrative, as demonstrated in the all-white Ken Loach's "Spirit of '45", a feature film-length documentary which covered the birth of the welfare state and its legacy. Interestingly, my article was met with only two irate tweets from rabid right-wingers but a blizzard of denial and hostility from the white left.

Instead of debating this worrying trend, personnel in the grouplet Counterfire tried to lead a Twitter mobbing (they got four involved) and attempted hounding me on the Third Estate website before one of the site co-founders gave the perp a slap.

I'm told that, failing to engage with the issues of blind spots in the movement regarding the blatant exclusion of non-whites that need addressing, bods at Shiraz "Socialist" (hah!) are resorting to an ad hominem dismissal of me as a "loose cannon" (as opposed to line-toeing hack, I guess). I hear that one principled leftist has posted evidence of my argument going back ten years but again, rather than deal with the problem, the response is bluster and then silence.

And Lindsey "Shibboleths" German of Counterfire did a phone round denouncing me as a chippy Chinese actress with a grudge about slave labour. Well, I do hope so, Lindsey. Never mind the use of language straight out of a Life on Mars episode illustrating the worst of the 1970s, I hope that any genuine socialist would be unhappy about activists being ripped off for their labour while Glorious Leaders draw a wage from the movement built by those activists Animal Farm stylee.

(And, by the way, why did you, in your role as convenor, decide NOT to mobilise Stop the War Coalition (STWC) action on the most crucial day for the anti-war movement? The day of the Parliamentary vote in March 2003 when a protest at the Palace of Westminster may well have stopped the war in Iraq.)

Unless we all stand together in the face of worsening assaults under capitalism, we all go under. We understand that revolutions have gone wrong when the new boss behaves like the old boss with all the same hang-ups, greed and personal ambitions, so we'd better learn fast that we have more in common than divides us ... and put it into practice.

In Lindsey's honour I'm reposting here my article from earlier in the year looking at the phenomenon of sistahs who ain't sistahs no matter how many big fat tomes they write on the subject.

The Left's invisibilty bomb: how's that liberation thing working out for you?

Perhaps it's unconscious and far from deliberate but there's a set of prejudices in the Left that they just won't confront. You can be a woman, non-white or working class but not all three at once or you get the INVISIBILITY BOMB exploded all over you.

Feminist Camilla Power wrote to me earlier this month asking me to link to her piece on the Socialist Workers Party crisis, Feminism is a Dirty Word, (which I did). However, in a letter to the CPGB Weekly Worker about the dreadful treatment of WOMEN, she then cites the experiences of MEN only. As the elephant in the room who's been writing about this for years as an insider with direct experience of the problem, I wrote to her:

"Imagine my surprise and disappointment to find your letter to the Weekly Worker citing several men but not my experience as the lone working-class non-white woman consistently whistle-blowing and challenging the sexism and abuse in the SWP and elsewhere in the left over several years — in a debate about WOMEN.

"I didn't find this further marginalisation a particularly sisterly act. I'm sure it was unconscious — it was certainly unthinking and insensitive but then what do my emotions count for?

"Please read your letter again and then marvel at the irony. I would hate to think you were part of the problem and not the solution — or all theory and no knickers, as us non-egghead non-people might say."

I got a polite email back — a sort of an acknowledgment — and I'm waiting with bated breath to see whether there's any serious attempt to redress this omission.

This situation has been going on for years. Once again I feel compelled to remind the "comrades" that it took a non-white working-class woman to propel your various campaigns into the media spotlight when the left was refusing to engage with the "bourgeois press" and wouldn't even put out a press release for fear it would sully their revolutionary purity: chiefly (but not solely) the Socialist Alliance and Stop the War Coalition. All full-time and for no pay leaving me in debt having paid to establish the anti-war press office while leaders such as John Rees and Lindsey German drew a wage.

Then there's Ian Sinclair's abysmally-researched book The March That Shook Blair, in which three people lay claim to being the STWC's press officers, but the one person who was at the coal-face actually battering down media resistance from Day 1 is left out. Shame that, because I have the day-to-day blow-by-blow accounts of what it took to get mainstream media to notice STWC when they tried to ignore the mounting anti-war anger.

[EDIT: This was written by Ian Sinclair only a few days ago specifically dealing with abuse in the STWC anti-Iraq war campaign, and I'm still not allowed to have a say. STWC is described as "... perhaps the most high profile campaign of the last decade...". How do you suppose it got to be "high profile"? Charles Shaar Murray writes: 'First time it's happenstance. Second time it's coincidence. Third time -- it's enemy action.' -- Ian Fleming, Goldfinger.]

According to Greg Palast, research shows that not just white people, but even black people, overlook black people when it comes to intellectual tasks. That's no different in the left where, with a few exceptions, everyone congratulates themselves for being "right-on" until something like the SWP sex-abuse accusations bites them on the bum and shines a spotlight on exactly how archaic their own assumptions and practice actually are.

Of course, I could always stay schtum and submit to my own obliteration as a human being. Standards of respect, comradeship, appreciation, decency, solidarity, inclusiveness, equality and other bourgeois individualistic fripperies evidently don't apply to uppity effnik coolie labour, only to the self-appointed chosen ones; but since this is how marginalisation and objectification work, I say screw that.

So backward is the left on this issue that they're behind even the comedians who've acknowledged the phenomenon in Paul Whitehouse's "The Fast Show" series. Arabella Weir's character regularly finds her bright ideas and solutions ignored by the boys in the room until, moments later, they regurgitate what she's said like it's their own. We are all Arabella Weir. Well, some of us are more Arabella than others.

It's a white boys club with a few women allowed to play. You have to be the "right" sort of non-white or woman to register in whatever passes for awareness. The left's current mindset has nothing to do with my liberation and EVERYTHING to do with continuing my oppression.

Anna's updated account of life, dearth and sexism in the SWP and the British left.

My time on the left has largely felt like this.

Public health warning about the People's Assembly as currently led.

A Bad Case of the Trots — an early public airing of the SWP/STWC problem in 2003.

Maybe less elephant in the room and more basketball gorilla. Does this mean I can rob banks?

This was written by Ian Sinclair only a few days ago.

The Smethwick Problem in 2010 by Evan Smith.

SWP Marxism 2013: the happiest place on Earth

Once again, the SWP's annual Marxism summer school descends upon ULU and its immediate environs. At previous such events during the late 1990s, I was cast as trolley-dolly-in-chief, looking after guest speakers. If only I'd realised I was being used as window dressing, I'd have declined the role toot sweet.

Marxism 2013 (starting this Friday) has been gleefully anticipated as "4 days in hell", with regular external speakers staying away in droves and the few who have ignored the party's pariah status following their (mis)handling of rape allegations, pulling out at the last minute in a mass oratus interruptus. Much bloodletting is expected, plus lots of whipping the dwindling membership into line.

In response to ULU's honourable challenge to the SWP's "denial, nepotism and sexism" over senior cadre Comrade Delta's unwanted sexual predations against two young women members, I'm reposting my account of Life With The Comrades below.

While the chief architects of the "denial, nepotism and sexism" of my personal experience have gone on to pastures new running a bijou café in grim and gritty Bloomsbury, it is interesting to note the raft of leftists, both inside and outside of The Party, who knew that women comrades were abused as a matter of course. And who remained mute (or worse) when I stood up for myself against bullying, sexism, nepotism and the theft of my intellectual and physical labour — because challenging women's oppression in this pond is a moveable feast. (If it's acceptable for middle-class men and their girlfriends — all white — to be abusive and then claim the credit for the success of my full-time unpaid work, then any pretence to actual socialist principles on their part is surely a belly-laugh and a half.)

It's been most amusing, for example, to watch former loyalists who once turned on a dime in defence of the party line being dragged, kicking and screaming, into finally having to take a position, following Socialist Unity's publication of The Transcript of the SWP conference cover-up of rape allegations.

So at least we know that rape is the line in the sand ... for some of them ... once the light's been snapped on.

More SWP rape crisis accusations: "a dangerous environment to be in"
Saturday, 9 March 2013
FOR FULLY UPDATED VERSION CLICK HERE

When you treat human beings as disposable things in the name of la causa, when appropriation of activists' labour and good will is the norm, when exploitation of your own side goes unchallenged, sexual abuse is one probable outcome.

The recent rape allegations that have sent the SWP into freefall and a near fatal crisis are a manifestation of a deeper problem in the organisation. The alleged sex abuse seems to have been of a different order to that of the Workers Revolutionary Party in the 1970s and 80s: Gerry Healy regularly raped women activists and the WRP's internal regime was straightforwardly violent. I was a member of the SWP between 1996 and 2001, and running the press operation for Globalise Resistance (Gr), Socialist Alliance (SA), Stop The War Coalition (STWC) and Media Workers Against the War (MWAW) until 2003. If anything, I found the leading men in the SWP curiously sexless and not half as attractive as the women, and can count the episodes of sex pesting I heard about on the fingers of one hand (without the thumb).

There was the guy who we jokingly named the Lothario of the Left, who seemed all talk and no trousers (he wished!) and who I thought posed no real threat beyond being a bit of a pain in the butt (he wished!). The more serious rumours concerned one senior member of the central committee (now dead) who was so predatory when he was drunk that his close comrades had to keep him away from young women.

Now there's the case of an SWP woman comrade who has accused a senior party member of rape when she was 17 and he 46 — and the widespread horror at the way they dealt with it. I've only read the kangaroo court transcript and the cryptic comments at SU and seen SWP males up close. What I suspect was happening was that two odd-looking men (politics being showbiz for ugly people) were so repressed that, when they were in proximity to female activists, the power of their party status went to their heads.

This has its roots not only in society but in the culture of the organisation. It's all very well the SWP flaming their critics, but this has been building for years. They continue to stick their fingers in their ears when they should have been addressing the objectification of their own members.

I can empathise totally with W, a woman who has struggled to get a fair hearing, sympathy and respect from her comrades, not to mention an overhaul of dodgy practises, over two years or more and then in desperation went for broke and reported it to the party's internal disputes committee. Subsequent events are a clear marker of how far they have degenerated and they don't even know it.

The cases of sexual abuse now surfacing are a symptom of a deeper problem inside the left. Whether it's ripping off their activists for wages, thieving their intellectual efforts and claiming credit for their successes, ignoring patterns of abuse has emboldened the abusers and led to a diminishing regard for their members until the logical conclusion of that trajectory — where even someone's body is no longer their own — is reached. And here we are at that particular terminus.

As one former SWP member says in today's Guardian report on the matter:

She added that she was coming forward two years later because she believes the SWP is a dangerous environment for women: "I want people to know it's a systemic thing. They've done this a few times, covered things up in the interests of the party and it's a dangerous environment to be in."

One long violation and shakedown.

In my own case, working full-time for no pay on the SWP's press over several years while being subjected to their own form of obedience training left me heavily in debt and marvelling at my own stupidity.

When  I joined in 1996, the SWP had no active press office yet complained bitterly that the bourgeois press always ignored them. Did you issue press releases for your events, I asked. No they didn't, evidently expecting the press to pluck their activities from the ether and report them. Ah, I can help here, I thought, and so began my complicity in my own exploitation for the next few years.

Paul Foot may have called me "the best press officer in the country" but that hasn't stopped me being Stalinised by the left.

In my bid to help out and make a difference, I established and ran the press for their Globalise Resistance, Socialist Alliance (SA) and Stop the War Coalition (STWC) campaigns when I should have been working on my own writing, but however many hours I worked, it was never enough for them. You can be behind the computer from 8am to gone midnight on their behalf when everyone else is earning a living, but if the district organiser demands you attend a paper sale at 6am you must do it — even if only she and one other turn up and no-one else in the whole of West London does — and you only sell one paper. If the central committee head honcho tells you, f'rinstance, to screw over friends and sympathisers Paul Mason and Dave Osler and, later, RMT's Greg Tucker out of bloody mindedness when they've done an excellent job, to refuse to obey their authorit-eye as I did is to invite the SWP's collective wrath.

The head honcho I refer to here had offered me patronage when I'd mistakenly assumed his encouragement was appreciation of new blood. If only I'd realised before the sun went down that it was new blood in the way Transylvanian children of the night appreciate new blood, I'd have ridden the first coach outta town. My aim had been to bring any skills I might have into the organisation and leave it in a better shape than I found it — those skills chiefly being the ones I'd learned from the talented arts publicists who'd gained me a stack of press for my performance work. As a result the media were beginning to take notice and a strange glint was appearing in the comrades' eyes.

I think I even did some good. When Steve Godward, firefighter, and SA executive member and candidate for Birmingham Erdington in the 2001 general election, was targeted by the far right, he was hung out to dry by head honcho who dismissed him as "not representing anyone". Shocked by this betrayal of one of our own, I refused to abandon him and managed to get a small mention of the far right threat in the Mirror, as well as writing and issuing press releases for him when his own FBU cut up rough. I got SA and STWC spokespersons media interviews, always declining invitations from producers to speak once I'd briefed them, as I didn't want any suspicion that I might be using this to build a media profile for myself (as it turned out others were effectively doing) — that's what my art is for. The only time I spoke in the media about the SA was when I was invited by BBC Radio 5 Live to be on Nicky Campbell's programme in the capacity as writer and performer, which I turned into an opportunity to talk about why I felt the SA was necessary.

I was pleased to be asked to write for the International Socialism Journal which head honcho edited (pieces on Sergei Eisenstein and George Orwell). I was glad that the Socialist Review magazine — edited by one of his girlfriends — could use my cultural reviews. I was happy to help out in the printshop proof-reading (for this I received £20 per day once in a blue moon). And being trolley-dolly looking after the outside speakers at their annual Marxism events was fun in parts.

However, head honcho's sudden announcement that I was now on the Socialist Review editorial board was an unpaid duty too much (they all drew wages). I was supposed to acquiesce to this command because of the star-fuckery honour of attending meetings at Paul Foot's house. As magnificent as Paul was (I did his national press when he stood for the SA) it was yet one more time-killer and space-filler. On top of this, I was told I was to be the party's press officer — with no consultation with me — when all I wanted to do was train up members to engage with the media. You can politely decline all you want but this sort of disobedience drives them several degrees off Sanity Central.

I'd tried to be a principled comrade, helping other members of the left: to name but three examples, doing the PR that broke SWP's China Miéville into the public eye for free when he complained that his publisher wasn't making him famous and that the SWP and Bookmarks were ignoring his brilliance — also lobbying for him inside the party until they started to feature him in activities; free publicity for SA chair Liz Davies' book Through the Looking Glass; and in 1999 paying one skint SWP aristocracy member a fiver an hour we couldn't afford for 4 hours cleaning per week (her idea and a fiver more per hour than I was getting for my labour for her party) while she studied for her degree, and nearly taking out a £600 overdraft for her rent arrears before we realised her SWP parents were a lot better off than we were with well-paid full-time jobs. Quite often I'd feed her a hot meal and we'd talk politics during allotted work hours, her correcting my poor grasp and explaining why I was petit bourgeois because I was an art worker and we were all atomised. (Art workers take note that the SWP regard you as not of "the Class".) Others were telling me I was petit bourgeois because I was Chinese and we all work in catering — not racist, then.

But no good turn goes unpunished and the blowback from these instances was typical of the irrational spite and fury permeating much of the left. Maybe it was something I'd done, something I said? But when I asked if I'd done something wrong either politically or personally to deserve the hostility I was getting, head honcho merely muttered that I was "exemplary". He still wouldn't tackle the bullying, though.

There is a tide in the affairs of man, and so on. Instead of riding the wave of my fledgling career as a writer and performer, I'd jumped off it in order to service, not the revolution, but some fairly unpleasant middle-management types who wouldn't have been looked at twice had they not climbed the greasy pole of the SWP.

In order to write my book, Coolie — about the strike by several thousand Chinese workers on the American trans-continental railroad in the 1860s — I'd decided to rent out my flat for a year. Once fees and expenses were paid, that would allow me to live frugally. Yet here I was in 2001, four years later with nothing written because every minute of time and every inch of psychic space now belonged to The Party, going deeper and deeper into debt for them.

Mike Marqusee stated that, for the SA, I'd done single-handedly the equivalent of the Countryside Alliance's 6 full-time paid press officers and their support with "flair and imagination".  The Weekly Worker called my unprecedented press successes "uncanny".

John Rees described my work as being akin to turning a tanker around mid-ocean and like mining for diamonds.

Following the 9/11 attacks, among other things, I broke the back of media resistance with only the help of Marqusee writing most of the press releases, managed to wrest the anti-war brand from the CND in favour of STWC, and got Richard Sambrook, Head of BBC News, on the back foot concerning severe under-reporting of numbers at a series of our anti-war demonstrations.

Now, you can write as many long screeds as you like but without someone yelling at the media to pay attention, you may as well send it up the chimney. Not that you'd know that from the sources who are claiming press credit in the histories while giving me a Stalinesque airbrushing-out  — naughty!

To have done all that work when no-one wanted to know and then watch Certain Parties fall over themselves to lay claim to it once something was up for grabs is not an edifying sight. No sirree, not by a long chalk. As an exercise in capitalist expropriation, this class (and gender and race) act on the part of the comrades is a wonder to behold. (I shall be putting my experiences on the actual frontline of the anti-Iraq war media battle on the record soon.)


The personal is political even on Planet SWP

Surely, Anna, I hear you say, it was worth it for the greater good what you done? Well, no, sadly. Head honcho took an axe to the Socialist Alliance to get into bed with the Birmingham mosque and then Respect. Then he did ... er ... more stupid things in Respect and, several years after I'd pointed out some questionable behaviour and been stuffed for it, he and his mates had to leave the SWP to form Crossfire or Counterfire, whatever the splinter's called. But I get ahead of myself. And the class should never be premature for then down comes the big Monty Python foot.

Even the big anti-Iraq war demo ten years ago in February 2003 wasn't immune. What a backstabbing palaver that turned out to be. Head honcho's SWP side running the STWC were alarmed by the magnitude of the anger over the coming war and during a critical period instructed their members in the SWP via Party Notes not to build the demo, leaving it to the Socialist Alliance to mobilise (with the notable help of some/a few/several honourable SWP members in the provinces who effectively blew a big raspberry and carried on regardless).

Then Birmingham, the biggest and strongest STWC branch, was purged. The hippies who put together the amazing Peace Not War CD as a fund-raiser and cultural response to the impending war were screwed over. When a Jewish socialist group requested platform time to speak against the war, they were refused on the grounds that their presence would alienate Muslims. The guy who'd made their case protested and was told that "you people" were "too sensitive." I was banned from doing the press on the day but went ahead and worked from home, getting Bianca Jagger and Americans Against the War followed on the march by ITN, doing what I'd been doing all along ... Oy veh, it got FUGLY.

That huge demo was built on the spine of the SA and yet the SA chair was denied a place on the platform while Lib Dem Charles Kennedy was welcomed with open arms ... and then promptly supported "our boys" once action started. And where's it all gone, anyway? If the SWP, Counterfire and STWC claim 1 to 2 million were on the march, then they have to give a good account of where they've all gone, 'cause it's not into the left movement.

All that energy and good will from the biggest demonstration in modern British history should surely have led to action in the tradition of the Greenham Common cruise missile protests or the Faslane sit-ins. Independently, two train drivers stopped an ammo train and students held a protest, but the STWC's leading SWP Rees/German axis declared direct action and civil disobedience to be "elitist". Nothing further bar the usual march came from STW. They just sat on it while many thousands of innocents died, Iraq's infrastructure was destroyed and JP Morgan led the syphoning off of the nation's assets.

[Edit: even worse. We now know that the SWP leadership of the STWC decided not to mobilise our forces on the most important date — the parliamentary vote on whether to go to war. This happened in March 2003, only weeks after the biggest protest in British history and on the day when we could have stopped the war. Labour MPs had promised to vote against the war but, without a massive protest outside, they were easily whipped into toeing the Blairite line. I ask again: who gains?]

What a waste. What a monumental dereliction of socialist duty. If only they'd put more energy into achieving our goal instead of acquiring personal power, status and all the capitalist baubles we're supposed to reject, we might not have stopped the war but we'd have made it a harder ride for pro-war forces and come out of this with a strengthened left.


Love-bombing SWP stylee

In the eighteen months of love-bombing it took to recruit me, I received numerous assurances of SWP superiority when it came to human relations. Tony Cliff's partner, a dear sweet but fiery old lady called Chanie Rosenberg, would do her turn on the platform at conferences, making it clear how, perhaps not every sperm, but every member was sacred. "Like gold dust."

More iron pyrites than gold, I'm afraid.

How many SWP staff are employed at below Living Wage rates and with no workplace trade union representation?

I looked from pig to man and then man to pig and then back again and already it was impossible to tell who'd look better in a bacon sandwich. Then I looked a bit harder and realised that the senior women had been part of what I once rudely called the "fuck-circuit": two power couples at the top; a complicated nexus of, ahem, "relationships" over the years; Lindsey calling me into a room at SWP HQ (said to be swept for bugs) to grill me on my new boyfriend. They are OK if you come already attached to a partner but woe betide you if you change partners and the lucky fella's not from the SWP pool. As the sympathetic partner of a senior member told me regarding my treatment, "It's because you're not available." Mostly, it's less about sexual coercion and more about idiotic ego.

Once head honcho finally got himself a new special friend, she waltzed over and told me in a most unsisterly fashion that she was doing my job so there! Which would have been lovely had she done the work. That would have been difficult, however, as she was allowed to make a living at a paying job, but the status I'd built up from sheer hard slog over the years made the sweetest love token when handed over on a plate by her beau.

Still, if that's how the SWP like it — it's their party and their choice.

We need a strong left that is able to counter the coalition's attacks on the working and middle classes that are looking like something out of the Enclosures movement. However, like anyone else who ever looked at the disgusting state of the world and wanted to do something about it, I never signed up for SWP abuse and I certainly never signed up for their omerta that they go around imposing on errant former members on pain of The Treatment. It is important that this stuff gets aired for so many reasons. If they can't, after all this grief, look at themselves honestly, then they deserve everything they're getting. And the working class is better off without them.

So, sister W, I sympathise and feel your pain. You learned the hard way that there is little solidarity or comradeship in that tiny corner of the left. I wish you the best of luck in rebuilding your confidence and your self-esteem. Your new life starts here.


What are we up against?

One of Comrade W's friends spoke up for her at the conference:

"The first thing I want to say is that the complainant in this case frequently asked to come to this session, so she could be aware of what’s being said about her, because it is her case after all. She was prepared to speak out so that people could hear about her experiences and learn from what’s happened here, so that it wouldn’t happen again. But she was denied that right by the CC.
She was questioned about why she went for a drink with him, her witnesses were repeatedly asked whether she’d been in a relationship with him, and you know, she was asked about (The chair begins to talk over X to warn about providing details) … she was asked about relationships with other comrades including sexual relationships. All this was irrelevant to the case.
We’ve got a proud tradition in the party of rejecting that line of questioning by the state. This is about consent. To date she hasn’t been told what evidence was presented against her by Comrade Delta and by his witnesses. She felt she was being interrogated and felt they were trying to catch her out in order to make her out to be a liar. She did not accept the line of questioning, saying ‘they think I’m a slut who asked for it’."

"Her treatment afterwards has been worse. She feels completely betrayed. ... The disgusting lies and gossip going round about her has been really distressing and disappointing for her to hear, and the way her own witnesses have been treated in Birmingham hasn’t been much better. ... Is it right that a young woman has to plan her route to work avoiding paper-sellers, or that she comes away from a meeting crying because people refuse to speak to her? Is it right that her witnesses are questioned about their commitment to the party because they missed a branch meeting?"

It's what they do.

Anna Chen writes about the state of the party in 2003 in A Bad Case of the Trots.

The left's invisibility bomb. How's that liberation thing going for you?

Anna Chen's poem "What is Filth?" inspired by Pat Stack's blogging "filth" comment.

SWP breakaway Counterfire group leads People's Assembly: a public health warning.

Ken Loach's Spirit of '45 review: ethnically cleansing history.

Soviet Goon Boy on wtf's wrong with these people?!

I've had several SWP goons going for me on Twitter. Here's the latest. Hilarious.

The Guardian on more sex pest allegations inside the SWP.

Solomon Hughes on SWP CC arrogance over the Sheffield organiser who they protected.

Cath Elliott on the no-platform for rape deniers vote at the UNISON National Women's Conference last week.

Some analysis on why this happened and the "logic to the madness": Leninism and the 21st Century.

A Marxist perspective in "Feminism is a dirty word"

Who is saying what about the SWP Crisis.

The Left's Invisibility Bomb

The People's Assembly led by the same characters who destroyed the Socialist Alliance (People's Assembly MkI) when it suited them, and Respect.

More SWP rape accusation: "a dangerous place for a woman"

How was anti-Iraq war demo energy frittered away? Demobilising the STWC on the most crucial day of the anti-war movement.

What Next Journal

A Bad Case of the Trots: for the record.

International Women's Day: All Mouth But Still No Trousers

Katie Price demands worship from her men and takes no crap

When Though Cowards Flinch asked me to write something for International Women’s Day, I was flummoxed by the request. What’s to write about? Everything seems to have reached a fine old equilibrium. Plenty of babes in government, the ruling class stuffed to the brim with bosses of the female persuasion ...

That nice Tessa Jowell could even afford to give her old man the heave-ho when he was caught embarrassing her with his alleged acceptance of largesse off Silvio Berlusconi, instead of hanging on timidly as the little woman was wont to do in days of old (not that embarrassment ever inhibited Tony and Cherie from snuffling in that particular hospitality trough). No, these women can snaffle their own Hérmes Birkins, thank you very much. And cheers for the goody-bag.

In the absence of anyone of high enough calibre on the domestic front, Katie Price and her high calibre domestic frontage is proving an outstanding role model for women.

Seriously.

As feminist icon she’s the only contender. While WAGs and slebs are publicly humiliated by their chaps’ shagathons and beatings, Katie demands a man who worships the ground ’pon which she walks. And, thanks to breast implant reduction, she now has less need to worry about said upholstery exploding under low pressure at high altitude when she flies. How liberating is that? Plus she’s authored more books than she’s read. Suck on that, literary losers (I address myself there.)

And, glory be, in this age of the Credit Crunch we now have equal pay … what with male friends getting their wages lowered to the level of women. Don’t tell me we haven’t made progress.

Incidence of rape is down, according to UK prosecution figures. I may very well be able to walk out naked on a Saturday night safe in the knowledge that chivalry is flourishing. And the only violation will be of the parking laws when I hurtle onto the kerb across two residents’ parking bays because we ladies can’t drive, innit? No more the irrational fear of the rogue minicab driver, or groundless suspicion of the leering lothario at the bar and his secret stash of Rohypnol.

Don’t forget: if you do find yourself sexually assaulted on a date and you lack witnesses, polaroids or video demonstrating you yelled “No!” in a manner that did not mean, “Yes, I’m up for it, big boy”, then you probably brought it on yourself. And so say an increasing number of women. Right on sistaz!

Good to see that women still luxuriate in the patronage of boyfriends and partners able to dole out privileges on the basis of comfort and dubious merit. Note Kate Moss and her scraggy range of schmatte tossed together at the behest of her Top Shop “mentor”, the tax-avoiding Monaco-residing Philip Green, in return for much moolah paid into the Moss coffers and which is said to have hastened the departure of the woman who’d dragged the clothing emporium out of the doldrums, Jane Shepherdson.

This levelling of the playing field has been so successful in bringing the gurls in from oblivion or penury that it’s even been adopted by the left. Ah yes, I well remember being told by one bit of socialist totty, “I’m doing your job now”, once I’d worked unpaid around the clock for la causa and something was up for grabs. She never did do the serious work but she enjoyed the fruits of my labour, proving that women can do whatever a man can do … and do it better. Cheers, comrade.

Elsewhere, lionesses of feminism decry sexist behaviour unless it’s their blokes who’re doing the exploiting. (Where’re my wages, Lindz?)

Nothing like support from fellow women in the movement. And, indeed, that was nuthin’ like it.

No, my respect goes to the women in real danger across the world, living under oppression every day and fighting to resist it. All power to you in your struggle, sisters, on International Women’s Day.

First published at Though Cowards Flinch

International Women's Day: All Mouth But Still No Trousers

Katie Price demands worship from her men and takes no crap

When Though Cowards Flinch asked me to write something for International Women’s Day, I was flummoxed by the request. What’s to write about? Everything seems to have reached a fine old equilibrium. Plenty of babes in government, the ruling class stuffed to the brim with bosses of the female persuasion ...

That nice Tessa Jowell could even afford to give her old man the heave-ho when he was caught embarrassing her with his alleged acceptance of largesse off Silvio Berlusconi, instead of hanging on timidly as the little woman was wont to do in days of old (not that embarrassment ever inhibited Tony and Cherie from snuffling in that particular hospitality trough). No, these women can snaffle their own Hérmes Birkins, thank you very much. And cheers for the goody-bag.

In the absence of anyone of high enough calibre on the domestic front, Katie Price and her high calibre domestic frontage is proving an outstanding role model for women.

Seriously.

As feminist icon she’s the only contender. While WAGs and slebs are publicly humiliated by their chaps’ shagathons and beatings, Katie demands a man who worships the ground ’pon which she walks. And, thanks to breast implant reduction, she now has less need to worry about said upholstery exploding under low pressure at high altitude when she flies. How liberating is that? Plus she’s authored more books than she’s read. Suck on that, literary losers (I address myself there.)

And, glory be, in this age of the Credit Crunch we now have equal pay … what with male friends getting their wages lowered to the level of women. Don’t tell me we haven’t made progress.

Incidence of rape is down, according to UK prosecution figures. I may very well be able to walk out naked on a Saturday night safe in the knowledge that chivalry is flourishing. And the only violation will be of the parking laws when I hurtle onto the kerb across two residents’ parking bays because we ladies can’t drive, innit? No more the irrational fear of the rogue minicab driver, or groundless suspicion of the leering lothario at the bar and his secret stash of Rohypnol.

Don’t forget: if you do find yourself sexually assaulted on a date and you lack witnesses, polaroids or video demonstrating you yelled “No!” in a manner that did not mean, “Yes, I’m up for it, big boy”, then you probably brought it on yourself. And so say an increasing number of women. Right on sistaz!

Good to see that women still luxuriate in the patronage of boyfriends and partners able to dole out privileges on the basis of comfort and dubious merit. Note Kate Moss and her scraggy range of schmatte tossed together at the behest of her Top Shop “mentor”, the tax-avoiding Monaco-residing Philip Green, in return for much moolah paid into the Moss coffers and which is said to have hastened the departure of the woman who’d dragged the clothing emporium out of the doldrums, Jane Shepherdson.

This levelling of the playing field has been so successful in bringing the gurls in from oblivion or penury that it’s even been adopted by the left. Ah yes, I well remember being told by one bit of socialist totty, “I’m doing your job now”, once I’d worked unpaid around the clock for la causa and something was up for grabs. She never did do the serious work but she enjoyed the fruits of my labour, proving that women can do whatever a man can do … and do it better. Cheers, comrade.

Elsewhere, lionesses of feminism decry sexist behaviour unless it’s their blokes who’re doing the exploiting. (Where’re my wages, Lindz?)

Nothing like support from fellow women in the movement. And, indeed, that was nuthin’ like it.

No, my respect goes to the women in real danger across the world, living under oppression every day and fighting to resist it. All power to you in your struggle, sisters, on International Women’s Day.

First published at Though Cowards Flinch

Man tells woman how to be a woman: Germaine Greer vs someone we've never heard of

Oh dear. Some GUY trying to make a name for himself is savaging Germaine Greer, author of The Female Eunuch, for not knowing "what makes a woman tick".

With an essay to plug and a career to build, Louis Nowra (who he?) emerged from nowhere and accused Greer, the author of a book that inspired millions of women around the world, of being "hopelessly middle-class". The evidence he provides is that she, horror of horrors, confused poor working-class wimmin with her book "with its many quotes from Nietzsche, Blake and Shakespeare".

Speaking as a working-class woman who left school at 16, I didn't read the Greer until many years after its 1970 publication, but I was reading Nietzche, Blake and Shakespeare in my teens. So were many of my peers. One did that in those days. Britain had a first class culture, a state education system that rivalled the best public schools, a fascinating and informative media, and people in charge of bits of the BBC who cared about culture and society. The writers we didn't know we could always look up, also having an excellent library system. Louis, when I saw discussion in the old New Musical Express about an author called William Burroughs, it didn't scare me. I simply went out and read him.

Louis finds the current state of things not worth challenging because "young women today love shopping more than ever". His accusations of misogyny sound very stupid coming from someone who sees botox injections as a "rite of passage".

Yes, Greer does tacky reality shows. Yes she's shrill. Yes, most definitely, she annoys the hell out of me. But after making such a massive contribution so young, she's earned it. She may be a batty publicity-hungry once-glorious figure, but she's OUR batty ... etc. We'll be our own Blue Maenyads, thanks ever so much. We don't need no bloke teaching granny how to rip our icons apart.

Geezers who reckon they know what makes a woman tick better than women themselves need to be strapped to a ticking time-bomb and sent on walkabout in the middle of the outback. Louis -- you're simply trolling. And you're SO totally pwned.

Man tells woman how to be a woman: Germaine Greer vs someone we've never heard of

Oh dear. Some GUY trying to make a name for himself is savaging Germaine Greer, author of The Female Eunuch, for not knowing "what makes a woman tick".

With an essay to plug and a career to build, Louis Nowra (who he?) emerged from nowhere and accused Greer, the author of a book that inspired millions of women around the world, of being "hopelessly middle-class". The evidence he provides is that she, horror of horrors, confused poor working-class wimmin with her book "with its many quotes from Nietzsche, Blake and Shakespeare".

Speaking as a working-class woman who left school at 16, I didn't read the Greer until many years after its 1970 publication, but I was reading Nietzche, Blake and Shakespeare in my teens. So were many of my peers. One did that in those days. Britain had a first class culture, a state education system that rivalled the best public schools, a fascinating and informative media, and people in charge of bits of the BBC who cared about culture and society. The writers we didn't know we could always look up, also having an excellent library system. Louis, when I saw discussion in the old New Musical Express about an author called William Burroughs, it didn't scare me. I simply went out and read him.

Louis finds the current state of things not worth challenging because "young women today love shopping more than ever". His accusations of misogyny sound very stupid coming from someone who sees botox injections as a "rite of passage".

Yes, Greer does tacky reality shows. Yes she's shrill. Yes, most definitely, she annoys the hell out of me. But after making such a massive contribution so young, she's earned it. She may be a batty publicity-hungry once-glorious figure, but she's OUR batty ... etc. We'll be our own Blue Maenyads, thanks ever so much. We don't need no bloke teaching granny how to rip our icons apart.

Geezers who reckon they know what makes a woman tick better than women themselves need to be strapped to a ticking time-bomb and sent on walkabout in the middle of the outback. Louis -- you're simply trolling. And you're SO totally pwned.

Priscilla Queen of the Desert review: looks pretty, tastes foul

The stage musical version of The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert opened this month in London’s West End.

I saw the original film when it opened at the 1994 Edinburgh Film Festival. I’d been looking forward to it as I’d always warmed to the men and women I’d met in the gay community who were full of the exuberance of challenging their oppression and winning major battles. I found them to be great role-models and lots of fun. Here, at last, was a movie made about them.

Imagine my surprise to see the all-white troupe of drag queens at the centre of the story looking after their own interests as a minority; cast as heroes, not against their enemies in the real world, but against Cynthia, an evil East Asian woman who is a Filipino import bride with a manic compulsion for firing ping-pong balls from her vagina. Depicted as the shrewish scourge of Bob, the beloved blue-collar mechanic, in reality the women she represents make up one of the most pitiful, least powerful minorities on the planet. Cynthia fulfils every dirty sleazy lazy stereotype conceived around the Yellow Peril and their sexuality.

What’s more, we are manipulated into identifying with Ralph/Bernadette (Terence Stamp), a solid-built pre-op male when he savagely beats up a woman in a bar. But that’s OK, it’s a butch bull-dyke he’s so bloodily putting in her place.

With both of these women, their differences puts them beyond the scope of our sympathies and legitimises them as targets. They are a far cry from the model “normal” woman the film finds acceptable: the white businesswoman, also a gay mother, possessing all the confidence her class and colour confer. You can be a lesbian but you must be feminine and able to thrive as one of the bourgeoisie. If you are feminine, as Cynthia unmistakeably is, then no jungle-fucking allowed: you must have control over your sexuality. The message is clear: transgressive outsiders are objects to be feared, hated and bashed up. Conform or suffer the consequences.

A passing group of Aborigines is let off because they agree to dress up in the heroes’ tranny garb, revealing yet more egotism from the filmmakers; they’re alright because they are like me.

The film can squeal and flaunt its self-proclaimed courage on the surface all it likes: it screams to me of cowardice and failure, of picking on those weaker than yourself, of a desperation to be taken into the fold as “one of us” rather than standing proudly by your identity and taking the consequences. A film that’s supposed to celebrate the cult of individuality is undermined by its deeper message that you must conform to some pretty basic sheepherding. Underneath the flamboyence there is a reactionary thrust to its values. It uses fear of Other to condition its audience which I find quite hypocritical when you consider who’s making this film and about what.

Madam Miaow as Suzy Wrong

The 1994 Edinburgh film festival coincided with the fringe festival debut of my solo show, Suzy Wrong — Human Cannon, in which I’d directed maximum firepower at some of the nastier stereotypes of East Asian women littering the joint: happy hookers Suzy Wong and Juicy Lucy from Virgin Soldiers, dragon ladies Madam Mao and Imelda Marcos, and assorted sex myths. The show’s climactic “coup de theatre”, following a wind-up where I hinted that I might put out ping-pong balls, was my appearance with a kapok-stuffed sex-doll, cunningly concealing a pump-action ping pong ball gun whose muzzle fired out of the business end of my blow-up friend: Suzy and her Uzi. Night after night I enjoyed reversing expectations and mowed down the expectant audience who were gagging for it, dahlings.

But I had been wondering whether in 1994 it was still worth bothering satirising stupid outmoded depictions of us Pacific Rimmers.

Priscilla was a sharp reminder that the battle was still on.

Oh, I would have liked a Q& fuckin’ A session with writer and director Stephan Elliott that night, all right.

This was gay liberation lite. The original Gay Liberation movement had a connection with all the other groups struggling for their emancipation. There was a sense of purpose, a political and philosophical basis to their activities and outlook. You can see the vestiges of that golden age in Peter Tatchell, whose political nous and humanity puts many of us to shame.

Now, if you’re East Asian, or the wrong sort of woman, you can be portrayed as a monster deserving of beatings and abuse with hardly a dissenting murmer. You don’t count. The characters in the film and those involved in the making of the film may be part of a minority that’s suffered, but they’re OK – the boot is now on the other foot and in everyone else’s face. Their comradeship only extends to anyone who happens to be built in their image. Screw empathy and compassion, it’s their turn now and they’re going to enjoy kicking down from their elevated status a rung or two up the ladder.

But it looks pretty and spectacular and we can ignore the sick messages pouring out.

So. There I sat in the Edinburgh Filmhouse — dehumanised as a woman, dehumanised as an East Asian, dehumanised as a human being. But audiences will love it and make Mr Elliott a shedload of money. After all, We Will Rock You is still running against all good taste.

UPDATE: London reviews of Priscilla, the Musical here

UPDATE Tues 15th January 2013: One thing learned from the Lobstergate row — currently engulfing Suzanne Moore, Julie Burchill and now Julie Bindel, all strong women and nice big juicy targets — is that "trannie" is now deemed to be an insulting term for trans-women. As language moves around (I feel uncomfortable with "oriental" and "Chinaman" but gleefully use "Pacific Rimmers" whenever possible) I am happy to be sensitive to to the use of "trannie" which appeared in the comments. This is something we can agree on — but it shouldn't detract from the core of the argument of this piece. Solidarity is a two-way street.

Priscilla Queen of the Desert review: looks pretty, tastes foul

The stage musical version of The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert opened this month in London’s West End.

I saw the original film when it opened at the 1994 Edinburgh Film Festival. I’d been looking forward to it as I’d always warmed to the men and women I’d met in the gay community who were full of the exuberance of challenging their oppression and winning major battles. I found them to be great role-models and lots of fun. Here, at last, was a movie made about them.

Imagine my surprise to see the all-white troupe of drag queens at the centre of the story looking after their own interests as a minority; cast as heroes, not against their enemies in the real world, but against Cynthia, an evil East Asian woman who is a Filipino import bride with a manic compulsion for firing ping-pong balls from her vagina. Depicted as the shrewish scourge of Bob, the beloved blue-collar mechanic, in reality the women she represents make up one of the most pitiful, least powerful minorities on the planet. Cynthia fulfils every dirty sleazy lazy stereotype conceived around the Yellow Peril and their sexuality.

What’s more, we are manipulated into identifying with Ralph/Bernadette (Terence Stamp), a solid-built pre-op male when he savagely beats up a woman in a bar. But that’s OK, it’s a butch bull-dyke he’s so bloodily putting in her place.

With both of these women, their differences puts them beyond the scope of our sympathies and legitimises them as targets. They are a far cry from the model “normal” woman the film finds acceptable: the white businesswoman, also a gay mother, possessing all the confidence her class and colour confer. You can be a lesbian but you must be feminine and able to thrive as one of the bourgeoisie. If you are feminine, as Cynthia unmistakeably is, then no jungle-fucking allowed: you must have control over your sexuality. The message is clear: transgressive outsiders are objects to be feared, hated and bashed up. Conform or suffer the consequences.

A passing group of Aborigines is let off because they agree to dress up in the heroes’ tranny garb, revealing yet more egotism from the filmmakers; they’re alright because they are like me.

The film can squeal and flaunt its self-proclaimed courage on the surface all it likes: it screams to me of cowardice and failure, of picking on those weaker than yourself, of a desperation to be taken into the fold as “one of us” rather than standing proudly by your identity and taking the consequences. A film that’s supposed to celebrate the cult of individuality is undermined by its deeper message that you must conform to some pretty basic sheepherding. Underneath the flamboyence there is a reactionary thrust to its values. It uses fear of Other to condition its audience which I find quite hypocritical when you consider who’s making this film and about what.

Madam Miaow as Suzy Wrong

The 1994 Edinburgh film festival coincided with the fringe festival debut of my solo show, Suzy Wrong — Human Cannon, in which I’d directed maximum firepower at some of the nastier stereotypes of East Asian women littering the joint: happy hookers Suzy Wong and Juicy Lucy from Virgin Soldiers, dragon ladies Madam Mao and Imelda Marcos, and assorted sex myths. The show’s climactic “coup de theatre”, following a wind-up where I hinted that I might put out ping-pong balls, was my appearance with a kapok-stuffed sex-doll, cunningly concealing a pump-action ping pong ball gun whose muzzle fired out of the business end of my blow-up friend: Suzy and her Uzi. Night after night I enjoyed reversing expectations and mowed down the expectant audience who were gagging for it, dahlings.

But I had been wondering whether in 1994 it was still worth bothering satirising stupid outmoded depictions of us Pacific Rimmers.

Priscilla was a sharp reminder that the battle was still on.

Oh, I would have liked a Q& fuckin’ A session with writer and director Stephan Elliott that night, all right.

This was gay liberation lite. The original Gay Liberation movement had a connection with all the other groups struggling for their emancipation. There was a sense of purpose, a political and philosophical basis to their activities and outlook. You can see the vestiges of that golden age in Peter Tatchell, whose political nous and humanity puts many of us to shame.

Now, if you’re East Asian, or the wrong sort of woman, you can be portrayed as a monster deserving of beatings and abuse with hardly a dissenting murmer. You don’t count. The characters in the film and those involved in the making of the film may be part of a minority that’s suffered, but they’re OK – the boot is now on the other foot and in everyone else’s face. Their comradeship only extends to anyone who happens to be built in their image. Screw empathy and compassion, it’s their turn now and they’re going to enjoy kicking down from their elevated status a rung or two up the ladder.

But it looks pretty and spectacular and we can ignore the sick messages pouring out.

So. There I sat in the Edinburgh Filmhouse — dehumanised as a woman, dehumanised as an East Asian, dehumanised as a human being. But audiences will love it and make Mr Elliott a shedload of money. After all, We Will Rock You is still running against all good taste.

UPDATE: London reviews of Priscilla, the Musical here

UPDATE Tues 15th January 2013: One thing learned from the Lobstergate row — currently engulfing Suzanne Moore, Julie Burchill and now Julie Bindel, all strong women and nice big juicy targets — is that "trannie" is now deemed to be an insulting term for trans-women. As language moves around (I feel uncomfortable with "oriental" and "Chinaman" but gleefully use "Pacific Rimmers" whenever possible) I am happy to be sensitive to to the use of "trannie" which appeared in the comments. This is something we can agree on — but it shouldn't detract from the core of the argument of this piece. Solidarity is a two-way street.